Techmeme
April 12, 2021, 5:30 PM

Top News

Microsoft:
Microsoft says it has acquired speech tech company Nuance for $19.7B in cash, a 23% premium on its Friday closing price, as it boosts its healthcare offerings  —  Acquisition will combine solutions and expertise to deliver new cloud and AI capabilities across healthcare and other industries
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is in early stages of developing a product that combines an Apple TV with a HomePod speaker and has a FaceTime camera and smart home functions  —  - Company also exploring Amazon-like speaker with iPad as screen  — Apple has trailed Amazon, Google in the connected home market
Julia Carrie Wong / The Guardian:
Sources detail how Facebook allowed state-backed political manipulation in small countries, prioritizing abuses considered PR risks in countries like the US  —  A Guardian investigation exposes the breadth of state-backed manipulation of the platform  —  Facebook has repeatedly allowed world leaders …
Ryan Smith / AnandTech:
Nvidia unveils Grace, a high-performance Arm-based server CPU for large-scale neural network workloads, expected to become available in Nvidia products in 2023  —  Kicking off another busy Spring GPU Technology Conference for NVIDIA, this morning the graphics and accelerator designer …
Lulu Yilun Chen / Bloomberg:
Under intense pressure from China, Ant Group will become a financial holding company that is regulated more like a bank, among other changes  —  - Chinese regulators summoned Ant for meeting on April 12  — Ant to fold all financial operations into holding firm
Pranob Mehrotra / XDA Developers:
Google is rolling out “Heads Up”, a Digital Wellbeing feature that tells users to raise their head when walking while on Pixel devices  —  In November last year, XDA's Mishaal Rahman spotted an upcoming feature, called Heads Up, in a teardown of the Digital Wellbeing app.
Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple faces supply constraints due to issues with MiniLED display production, but still plans to debut two iPad Pros later this month  —  - New iPads planned for introduction in latter half of April  — MiniLED display is key part of Apple's upgrade proposition
Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:
Biden administration announces the nominations of ex-NSA deputy director Chris Inglis as first national cyber director and Jen Easterly as CISA head  —  The Biden administration plans on Monday to name a former senior National Security Agency official as the first national cyber director …
Leo Kelion / BBC:
Apple and Google block an update to NHS COVID-19 app that uploads logs of venue check-ins, citing API terms on collecting location data  —  An update to England and Wales's contact tracing app has been blocked for breaking the terms of an agreement made with Apple and Google.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols / ZDNet:
Despite the backlash, Free Software Foundation doubles down on restoring Richard M. Stallman to its board after he issued a defensive non-apology apology  —  Weeks after being readmitted to the Free Software Foundation board, Stallman speaks and the board stands behind him.
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
MLB announces that venerable trading card company Topps will begin selling new NFT baseball cards via the WAX blockchain starting on April 20  —  The MLB has its answer to the NBA's Top Shot NFT clips  —  Major League Baseball has announced its latest move to cash in on the NFT craze …

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:
Bringing local models and sandboxed tools to Windows and GitHub Copilot  —  GitHub Copilot will soon determine when a task is best handled by on-device AI and when it needs cloud-scale models.
Will Reed:
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Zoho:
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IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Sources:
Qualcomm's CEO on the coming AI phone supercycle
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
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The Upstarts Podcast:
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Great Chat:
The launch industrial complex
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Big Technology Podcast:
Can AI Keep Growing Exponentially? Let's Ask SemiAnalysis — With Dylan Patel and Jordan Nanos
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Google's AI Infrastructure Chief, Amin Vahdat, on the Physics & Economics of Frontier AI
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
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More News

Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Liam Tung / ZDNet:
Ben Smith / New York Times: